As one of the first high-rise buildings of Singapore's post-colonial redevelopments, the Golden Mile Complex at Beach Road is unlikely to survive the next couple of years.

Built as a ‘vertical city’, it is one of the very few projects following the Japanese "Metabolist Movement" - an architectural organism, open to grow and change around its structure.

Apparently, 35 years later, many people can't bear the intriguing friction between architecture as virtuosic clarity and the refreshing patchwork of residents' and shopkeepers’ random designs that it has become.

A Nominated Member of Parliament sophisticatedly sums up his discomfort thus: "The Golden Mile Complex is a vertical slum, a terrible eyesore, a national disgrace."

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